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I watched my mother die a horific death at the age of 56 from breast cancer.

Yes, life is a one way ride to the grave but cancer is a bad way to go.

People get their colons remove because of either familial polyposis or ulcerative colitis to stave off the eventual development of colon cancer. Undescended testical are removed routinely because of the very high risk of testicular cancer. This is no different.

She is making a decission based on risk versus benefit. Sounds rational to me, I’m amazed at the response to this article.

She is considering a condition that may lead to a prolonged, painful death versus some cosmetic issues and the chance to see grandchildren get married.

Some of these reactions are common for those who have not educated themselves on this topic. Some of these reactions are callous and show the character of the poster, ignorance being no excuse.

For those that prefer to educate themselves instead of make fun of other people in difficult situations:

The cancer that this gene causes is typically malignant, typically grade three and the women die of either bone or brain cancer. Who would not do something to prevent that from happening if they were given the option? Choose one:

(1) Waiting for a cancer that is more likely than not going to happen, then undergoing chemotherapy, radiation, and still end up dying a painful awful death and not living to see their children grow up, their grandchildren be born, not living anymore at all, you know, die?

(2) Have a surgery that would more likely than not prevent all of the above even if it means giving up what appears to be a ‘perfectly healthy’ body part.

Appearances can be deceiving. It is the breast tissue that is the danger. It is a fast duplicating tissue and with each replication, there are some errors. BRCA1 helps correct those errors. We all have those errors, but our BRCA1 gene fixes them for us. These women have one faulty BRCA1 gene and one working BRCA1 gene that keeps them going. But as time goes on, that gene goes bad too. Then the error in replication is not corrected and a tumor starts growing and it starts growing FAST. Then, for anyone that knows, breast cancer is never really cured, it is only ever kept at bay. Then, it is a matter of living with cancer every day until eventually it catches up with you and you die that painful awful death anyway.

What if you could have prevented the cancer in the first place? You would have. You would have given your right arm, you would have given almost anything.

Think of how it would feel to live, knowing that someone out there wanted to kill you and would if ever given the chance. You never knew when, your never knew where. Imagine the relief that you would feel if you read in the paper one day that that person had recently died. That’s the relief that these women get. It’s a difficult personal choice and I question the true heart of the posters that have had their fun questioning the sanity of the woman in this article and hope that a bit of information has been the remedy.